New Cosmetic Wings, Ancient Weapons Talk, Quinsane vs GR 52
New Blackrock Cards: Dragon Egg & Dragonkin Sorcerer
A Look Into the Next Patch - Abathur, Murky, Stitches, Lost Vikings, and Healing
Patch 6.1.2 PTR - Build 19783
There was a small PTR build tonight that changed the client to a Release build.
PvP Damage Reduction Hotfix Reverted
The hotfix to give a 10% damage reduction in PvP has been reverted.
Originally Posted by
Blizzard
(
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)
Recently, we applied a hotfix that reduced the damage players took in PvP by 10%. Our goal was to reduce damage across the board in order to slow matches down a bit.
However, we received overwhelming feedback from players saying that this change did not result in a positive effect on gameplay, and that they preferred the faster-paced matches they were experiencing prior to the hotfix. After some discussion, we’ve decided to reverse the change and remove the 10% damage reduction in PvP.
We will continue to look for opportunities to improve PvP combat in World of Warcraft. Thanks for your continued feedback!
Item Level Boost Live
The
previously announced item level boost is live, and came with the surprise of the final stage legendary rings getting a boost as well.
AskMrRobot and
WoWDB should be up to date with the latest changes.
Patch 6.1 Hotfixes - March 18
Originally Posted by
Blizzard
(
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)
Items
- To ensure that defeating new bosses feels appropriately rewarding, we are increasing the item levels of Blackrock Foundry raid drops by 5 item levels across all difficulties. Additionally, Stage-4 Draenor crafted and Tier-4 Apexis vendor gear have also been increased by 5 item levels to keep their power unchanged relative to Blackrock Foundry raid itemization. The above changes are retroactive. For more information on the reasoning for this change, please visit the forum thread titled: Blackrock Foundry Item Level Change.
PvP
- In response to player feedback, we've reverted a hotfix from March 11 where players dealt 10% less damage against other players while in PvP combat.
Classes
Death Knight (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
- General
- [Requires a realm restart] Reverted a hotfix from March 11 that fixed a situation where Blood Tap (Talent) and Death Strike would interact incorrectly and allowed Death Runes to become permanent.
Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
- Frost
- Fixed an issue where Enhanced Frostbolt's effect could be incorrectly consumed if the Mage was casting Frostbolt when it triggers.
Quests
- The Day Deathwing Came: What Really Happened: Upon reaching the end of the canyon, Martek should now correctly remember that his motorcycle could fly, and allow players to complete the quest.
Environment and World Events
- Frostfire Ridge
- Removed an inaccessible treasure marker on the mini-map for characters that have learned Frostfire Treasure Map.
Raids and Dungeons
- Blackrock Foundry
- The Blast Furnace
- Blackhand should no longer be speaking to players during the encounter if he has already been defeated.
- Legacy
- Naxxramas: Fixed an issue that could cause players to become stuck if Gothik the Harvester was defeated too quickly.
Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
CM and Developer Community Interaction
Every day there are constructive posts that essentially ask the same unanswered question. "Why doesn't Blizzard really care anymore?"
1. You and I must disagree on what "constructive" means.
2. It shouldn't be a shocking revelation that we don't jump to answer questions formed through false pretenses, or derived from fallacious arguments.
There are thousands of Blizzard employees who have dedicated their lives to not only making great video games, but all-around epic entertainment experiences. So many people here are so passionate and dedicated to their careers that your question is, at the very least, perplexing.
We understand people can get frustrated about things here and there. That's okay. WoW has a lot of moving pieces. Players are passionate too and we love that. But to channel that frustration into an accusation that we just don't care isn't constructive at all. To re-frame that accusation into a question is to really not be asking anything.
It feels like there's a barrier between the players and the devs, to the point that we often have no clue what's going on with the game changes or why. As an example I can relate to: Echo of the Elements, a Shaman talent, was totally redesigned for 6.1.
Why? We don't know. Nobody was complaining about it (at least not in noticeable amounts), and it was actually one of our better-designed talents. It wasn't used ALL the time or NONE of the time - it fit some situations better than others, as a talent should, and thus we'd change in/out of it on a fight-to-fight basis.
It didn't get better or worse necessarily - it's just a completely different design now.
I understand that some people will always want more information on our design philosophy. But do keep in mind that a developer's primary job is to develop. That's their expertise, but we'll do what we can as an organization to make sure players have some perspective on why the developers are designing things the way they are.
To use your example about patch 6.1 and Echo of the Elements, let's take a look at the section labeled "Talent Balance" in the 6.1 patch notes:
Developer Commentary: A primary focus for class changes in Patch 6.1 is improving overall talent balance. Not every talent needs to be useful in every situation; and in fact it’s often better if they have strengths and weaknesses. But we do try to have each talent be useful in some situations, and make them close enough in value that if you really enjoy the gameplay of a talent you don’t feel like you’re dragging your group down by using it.
For these changes we focused primarily on tuning (tweaking numbers), and nearly all changes are buffs to underperforming talents. The goal is to reach more variety of viable builds, without bringing down the existing popular choices.
Could one of those thousands of Blizzard employees not come to the forums look at some class post and say I see some real good Ideas and will take them to the devs.That would show one that Blizzard cares about what the players think and there are some really good Ideas on the forums.
It's not always beneficial for us or the community to acknowledge that we're doing such things, but that doesn't mean we aren't already doing that.
We're constantly reviewing and considering feedback, whether we're sifting through posts at work or logged into the game on our own time and checking out what people are saying/doing.
But to acknowledge every piece of feedback we're taking into consideration can lead to confusion or frustration if we don't end up acting on said feedback.
Acknowledgements so quickly get misconstrued as agreements, or even promises. Collecting feedback just isn't a public-facing communications exercise in and of itself. (
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)
Item Level Boost Hotfix
I'd really love to know why changing a couple integers for items' level requires testing. I'm not being a jerk here or calling you guys incompetent. I'm legitimately curious how and why this could cause problems that need testing.
All hotfixes that affects the live game requires testing. Even seemingly simple things (it's not that simple) like changing a couple of integers requires testing to ensure that all the tier items are indeed being increased by 5 item levels and not something wacky like 50 item levels, the set bonuses still work, and so on. (
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)
Crowd Control & Diminishing Returns List Updated
Lore posted an updated version of the CC and DR category list today.
Blizzard Stream Award Winners
The Blizzard Steam Award winners were announced today!
Published on 2015-03-19 02:10 AM
Build of the Month
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